


The Cup Shatters

by Puck_Ekstedt



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-11
Updated: 2015-08-11
Packaged: 2018-04-14 02:21:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4546515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Puck_Ekstedt/pseuds/Puck_Ekstedt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Molly wants to believe that Will Graham is free from his past, but sometimes she can see the cracks in his new life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Cup Shatters

There was a stillness to Will Graham that Molly found reassuring. 

Three days after they'd first spoken, two weeks after he'd driven into town with a suitcase of shirts and a car full of dogs, she'd found herself sitting opposite him at the diner, on a date that wasn't a date. The place was too quiet. Old Jim was at the counter wearing his Sunday best and his sandals and eating two plates of French toast. A pair of teenagers, a girl and a boy, stepped in and out again, in and out, the bell chiming each time. Otherwise it was deserted, and at six in the evening too. She felt there should be music playing. Wasn't there usually music playing? A fat, juicy fly flew in a slow arc around them, bobbing and swaying with its own weight. 

He was on his first cup of coffee, she on her third. She said too much, too quickly. He said very little, but gave a gentle nod each time she paused for breath. She laughed too loudly, insincerely. He leaned the side of his forehead against the window, and she thought she had lost him. Then he laughed too, suddenly, a sharp burst of noise soon swallowed, but when she looked up he was smiling. And when, an hour later, she gestured dramatically - her fist a soccer ball, her palm an eight-year-old's foot - and the cup went flying off the table, he didn't flinch. She watched as he knelt to pick the china from the floor, carefully laying out a jigsaw of porcelain. Then he returned to his seat, head resting on the window pane, as her hands rearranged the pieces.

She knew that Will hadn't always been this way. As the weeks became months he told her everything, or enough of everything, sometimes haltingly, sometimes all at once. But though she sensed from the beginning that this stillness was newly found, she had difficulty imagining him without it. Every now and then she would find him sitting on the porch, looking out into the distance at nothing at all, with such contentment, such peace. Even if this was a contentment fought for, a peace which hadn't come naturally, that didn't mean it wasn't real. He had taken a worn suit from the back of the closet, a suit so long-forgotten that he couldn't be sure it had ever been his, and yet it fitted him so well.

Only twice had she doubted that the worries of his past were behind him. One weekend they had driven out to the river, as they did every once in a while. A trunk full of fishing gear, her son on the seat between them racing through another spy book, three dogs crowding the back seat. The road stretched flat and white ahead, the trees heavy with snow. The radio had played a song she hadn't heard since high school. Once they arrived, Will and Walter headed straight to the water, but she'd sat in the truck a while longer, trying to convince herself that if the lake wasn't frozen over then it couldn't be too cold to venture outside. Summoning the strength and setting off at a brisk pace, she'd almost reached them when she heard a panicked yell. Walter in the water, current moving fast, his coat a blur of red heading downstream. An echoing cry rose in her throat. Seconds later it was over, Will grabbing his ankle, hauling him out, spluttering and scared but unharmed. Back in the truck, wrapped in blankets with a flask of hot tea, Walter had been laughing again within the hour, but Will was distracted. He didn't say a word during the drive home, didn't smile again for a day or two, and even then he seemed nervous, sitting up and murmuring to the dogs late into the night. It was the look on his face that kept Molly awake. The look on Will's face as he reached into the water for her son. Panic, fear, yes, but more than that. The look of a man whose whole world was crashing down. The look of a man who knew what that meant.

The other time had been so fleeting that afterwards she wondered if she had imagined it. Late at night, she had awoken to find his side of the bed empty and cold. Moving softly downstairs, she had discovered him half-asleep in his chair by the fireplace. Staring into the heart of the fire, she saw that something had recently been placed within it. A small curl of paper had fallen into the grate, its edges burnt. Part of her knew what it was, who it was from, but she asked anyway. And again that look, that look that said it would never last, that it could all still collapse around him.

"It's nothing," he said, turning away.


End file.
